New song: Approach of the Derelict Research Station

Here's my newest song: Approach Of The Derelict Research Station! This one is not just my newest song, but also one of the oldest: it's an evolution of a song that I wrote some tens years ago, then called Space War X9.

Two years ago, when I decided that the songs I was writing at that time should form an album together, I wondered what else should be on it. I've always been quite fond of Space War X9 and wanted to include it, but it was lacking an important ingredient: cello! On my album I want all the songs to feature my cello in a prominent role. However, back when I made Space War X9 I had no idea how to record my cello in a way that made me happy with the results, so I mostly composed purely electronic music.

Adding cello was an interesting challenge: the tonality of Space War X9 turned out to be rather odd and none of it had been written with an additional instrument in mind. Still, somehow the cello ended up being the lead instrument through most of it. Listening to the new version, it now feels weird that it once lacked cello, since the cello is now the lead instrument during most of the song.

This song is also the first one to be released with narration. On my album all the songs will tell a story together. Voice actor Chris Einspahr has graciously lent his voice and I love how he acts. His voice also blends very well with the music. Check it out:



At the end of the song there's a bit of crazy cello improvisation. I often do these kinds of intense gliding notes during jam sessions but this is the first time I dared include one in a real song. I'm quite happy with how that turned out, and it nicely captures the craziness of the fight portrayed at the end of the song.

If you'd like to play this song yourself and give your own twist to the crazy ending, you can find cello sheet music for it on music.joostvandongen.com, as well as a version of the song without the cello, to play along it.

The art in the video is by Karen Papazian, who allowed me to use her existing piece "Not much left". While it wasn't originally drawn for this song, it perfectly fits what I imagined the setting to be.

Finally, I should mentioned the samples I used here. I found these samples on FreeSound.org and it's great that most audio on this website requires nothing more than attributing the original artists and then you can use it. The samples used in Approach Of The Derelict Research Station were made by 211redman112, foxraid, lezaarth, TMPZ_1, Ideacraft, Deathscyp, rene___, steshystesh, jonccox and lollosound. (Gotta love the kinds of named people give themselves on the internets!)

This leaves only one song to finish for my album, almost there!